The Labyrinth
by Aconitum-Napellus
Summary: Spock has been missing on a post-apocalyptic planet for thirty-nine days. Christine Chapel sets out to find him.
1. Chapter 1

[A.N. Inspired by Karracaz's photomanipulation, 'Untouchable', on deviantArt]

It had been thirty-nine days since they had last seen Spock – one day for every year of his life, Christine thought with a moment of grim humour. Thirty-nine long days… She had felt every one of them. She had become sick of seeing the same planet revolving beneath the ship for all that time. Usually she found such sights tirelessly beautiful, but this time…

This time, Spock was down there somewhere. Azure seas, ghosts of clouds and moss-mottled landmasses aside, the thought of his body somewhere there, a pinpoint amidst dust and boulders, made her gut clench with anxiety and longing. Not a wife or partner – hardly a friend really – she was not allowed to mourn openly – but she kept her fear and grief tight inside, praying every spare moment that he was alive, and safe.

They had pinned down his possible location to five square miles of post-blast terrain somewhere near the epicentre of the planet's last, cataclysmic war. The lingering radiation interfered so badly with the sensors that there was no hope of locating him with any more precision. It was no so much that they had found him, but that he was not anywhere else. Therefore, he was here, or dead.

Christine's face was pinched with worry as she walked through the ruins of Talasin's greatest city.

_Let him not be dead… Let him not be dead…_

The heat crept around her and enclosed her like the inside of a warp reactor. She ignored it. Her head was protected from the blistering sun with a regulation sunhat, and the tissues of her body were protected from the remnants of radiation with an array of shots. She had an insulated flask of chilled water and a full ration pack at her hip, and she could continue for a good few hours without a break. She _would_ continue. There was no question of that. She would scan what she could with the faltering tricorder, and the rest, her eyes and hands could do.

There were dozens of them searching for the Vulcan. She had volunteered for the first party. They had split up to cover more ground, and she was more than happy to be searching alone, with no one to view her worry but herself.

'Dammit, where is he?' she murmured.

Her voice sounded strange in the hot silence, and she pressed her lips shut again, becoming aware of the tingling in the thin skin as she did. She reached into her pack and applied more radiation-screen to her lips and face.

There was to be no easy rescue. This far into the radiation zone the communicator barely functioned, and using the transporter was out of the question. Whatever it was the Talasees had loaded into their bombs and weapons, Federation technology hated it. Christine speculated over various forms of radiation, perhaps a fine dust of abindum powder mixed into the explosives. It was almost impossible to analyse it because it repelled all attempts. Machines broke down within a few minutes of exposure. The human body, miraculous as always, persisted – but even the tenacity of living things was an open question. There certainly weren't as many insects or animals this far in as there had been on the fringes of the zone.

She moved onward, curving around the ruined walls of what may have once been a home. The grey bricks were crumbling, and she wondered if it was the nature of their makeup, or whether the radiation had made them so friable that they could no longer hold their shape.

She scanned again, looking for any fluctuations in the tricorder readings that might indicate a Vulcan heartbeat, or any biological activity on the level of a higher mammal. _Nothing so far. Nothing… Nothing… Noth- Wait!_

She stared at the readings. Something. Something perhaps… A tiny blip that indicated some rhythmic activity, somewhere nearby…

She turned around, her eyes unwavering on the tricorder's screen, watching for any increase or decrease. Suddenly she remembered playing hot and cold as a child, searching for sundry trinkets with her friends. The memory caught her and held her for a moment, and the tricorder screen blurred. But this was Spock's life…

Her gaze sharpened again, the present flooding back. The heat of the sun prickled at the back of her neck, and the readings on the tricorder were growing in intensity as she moved slowly forwards. Somewhere… Somewhere…

Warmer… Warmer… The readings held, and then grew again – and then, as she stepped forward, faded a little. She pursed her lips. Colder. It was as if she had walked straight over the top of him.

She stopped, confused. She let her eyes travel over her surroundings. She was in the ruin of a house – she had to be. Yes, there was the doorway, between two crumbled uprights. The sill was nothing more sophisticated than a slab of stone, and it was worn with footfalls that had long since died away. She could trace the lines of walls amongst the rubble, like tracing the median on a graph sprinkled with dots. She pushed a greying heap of rubbish aside and saw what might have been a bowl, smashed and useless, the brightness of the glaze only suggested through years of accrued grime.

There had to be signs of more recent life…

And then she saw it – a shaded space under an indecipherable jumble of remains, where the thick dust and dirt had been pushed aside as if by the side of a foot. And there was some kind of split there, a flat surface and marks in the dust as of fingers prising at the edge.

Christine knelt, swinging the tricorder out of the way, and moved her own fingers along the split in the ground, and felt wood – wood so ingrained with dust that it looked like stone. It was a hatch – and she dug her fingernails in and heaved it up and revealed a black space beneath. Dust trickled into the darkness. The brightness of the sun caught the motes as they fell, but illuminated little else.

She proffered her tricorder towards the hole, and caught the spike in the readings. Still faltering due to the persistence of the radiation around her, but stronger than they had been. It was a heartbeat, definitely, and the pattern was Vulcan.

She held in her joy, allowing herself no more than a flashing smile. Until she set eyes on him it was too soon to celebrate.

She opened her communicator. It was pitch dark down there, and she had not come equipped for darkness. She tried hailing the ship, but all she received was static. She shut the device again, and sighed. She would have to rely on the resources she had.

She turned the tricorder screen to its fullest brightness, and angled it into the hole. It lit up little beyond a yard away, but it did show her a ladder stretching down into impenetrable shadow. Without allowing herself to acknowledge the lingering doubts and fears, she turned around and lowered herself into the darkness. 

The silence spread around her, the crackling, oppressive heat suddenly cut off as she slipped into full shade. It was hardly any distance to the bottom. Her feet touched strewn dirt almost as soon as her head was below the level of the trapdoor.

It was cool down here – almost cold compared to the dry heat of the ground above. The pale light from the tricorder showed almost nothing but a floor littered with crumbled, indefinable detritus – evidently the walls were too far away for the light to reflect from them. But with this pallid light that might only be a matter of yards, Christine reasoned.

She turned the tricorder screen towards the ceiling above. There was little more than six inches clearance above her head, and the ceiling looked to be composed of something akin to concrete. She hoped it still had some structural integrity after this many years of lying abandoned, but it had seemed solid when she had walked on the ground above.

She studied the faltering readings on the tricorder again, starting up the same game of hot and cold that she had played on the surface. The readings were stronger down here, and the radiation showed a marked decrease. Perhaps she was exploring some long-abandoned bomb shelter? There was definitely a Vulcan heartbeat now, and signs of expelled carbon-dioxide and other waste gases.

She moved forward slowly, leaving the square of light that marked the trapdoor and pressing into the darkness, using only the faint glow of the screen on the floor to guide her. Fallen rubble cracked and crumbled under her feet, and dust rose and resettled, powdering her sweat-sheened skin with grit. She felt the change in temperature acutely now. It was probably not so cold in actuality, but the contrast to the world above to her damp and overheated body made her shiver.

She continued to walk, playing blind man's buff now, always expecting a low beam or unseen object to cause a trip or fall. Now she was continually checking the readings on the tricorder her eyes were semi-dazzled by the screen and the darkness was darker still when she looked back into it. And then she came to a wall, rough-surfaced and covered in cobweb-like accretions, and she felt sideways, pushing more rubble aside with her feet.

And then she fell in earnest.

Her uncontrolled shriek of alarm echoed from unseen walls, and she scrabbled with her hands as she fell through empty space and then hit _hard_ and slid. She caught at what felt like the hard angles and hard drops of stairs beneath her body. Pain was blossoming in her shins and her ribs where she had hit the ground, and she bit back the urge to cry.

She sat still for a moment, taking inventory, feeling for her flask, her ration pack, her medical bag and tricorder, and then making an internal assessment, rationalising that there was nothing broken and she was no more than shocked and bruised. She caught her breath, brushing hair out of her eyes with a dusty hand, restraining herself from rubbing the tears from her eyes. Dirt in her eyes was the last thing she needed. Her throat and lungs were already dry with dust.

She opened up the tricorder again and studied the screen with shaking fingers, focussing on her mission to deflect her mind from the sharpness of her bruises. The readings were definitely stronger now. She was getting closer. She must be. She stood up, bracing a hand on the wall she felt to her left, taking in a breath of air that was still good, if not entirely fresh, and then began with shaking steps to descend the staircase.

It was a spiral. She noticed that as she began to move, her hand trailing over the curve of the wall. And then she thought of something, and stopped. She recalled the sudden panicked plunge as she had started to fall, apparently through empty space. She looked up, angling the tricorder screen in the same direction. It lit nothing useful, so she turned and made her way up the stairs, her forehead furrowed.

It was as she had thought. The stairs continued up for thirteen steps, and then the treads became crumbled and disjointed and finally nonexistent, nothing but the damaged remains of the central pillar and the smooth outer walls above her head. She had fallen down a hole out of which she had no hope of climbing. Even the pillar seemed to crumble into nothingness a little further up, and she had never been good at shinning up trees and poles as a child, anyway.

She bit her lip into her mouth, her stamina wavering. Deliberately she brought the thought of Spock, and of the strengthening readings on the tricorder, to the front of her mind. She had come here to find him. She _would_ find him, and together they would find a way out.

She began to pick her way downward again, feeling each step with great care, fearful that the concrete-like treads would be broken into a void again at any point. But the further down she stepped the more stable and whole they became. Perhaps the effects of the radiation again, she thought. Perhaps she had found the limits of its reach and it had no power to degrade compounds into base molecules down here. There was certainly less and less radioactivity spiking on the tricorder, and the Vulcan heartbeats were becoming a firm and regular thing, a slow and steady rhythm urging her on to where life obviously persisted.


	2. Chapter 2

Christine stumbled onto a level floor, into another dark space that stretched away for an unknown distance around her. She stood still, taking stock. The space did not _feel_ large. She stamped her foot, and the echoes did not _sound_ large. Held close to the wall the tricorder showed her a hint of pale green paint, smudged and flaking and revealing layers of other pale paints beneath. And something at the edge of the pool of light…

She shifted the angle of the tricorder. It was a flat metallic panel affixed to the wall at shoulder height. She touched it – and almost shrieked for the second time. Light flooded the space, at first dazzling and flickering and unsteady, and then fading and settling to a dim glow. She blinked, unable to see even in this low illumination after the darkness she had grown used to. She pressed her hands over her eyes, holding them steady and then slowly parting her fingers, slowly letting increasing amounts of light through as her eyes adjusted.

It was some kind of computer room, it seemed. It stretched perhaps twenty feet at its widest, and was almost square, notwithstanding some niches in the walls. There were ranks of consoles before her studded with touch pads and an alien writing that was quite beautiful in its elaborate swirls and flourishes. She took a step forward, reaching out but not touching. These consoles were not dusty, she realised. Although the walls were flaking and the floor was dirty, the surfaces of the consoles, wherever there were buttons, were clean. The floor between the consoles had the look of an often-used path, worn clean and clear down the centres, blurred at the edges by the growth of dust and dirt.

This place was used…

She caught her breath, looking about nervously, and then remembering that the tricorder was far more skilled at sensing life than were her eyes and ears. She glanced at the screen. There, still, beat the Vulcan heartbeat, and there were the traces of exhaled gases – but nothing else. No tremors of alien life. No signs of non-Vulcan breathing patterns. No heat signs but –

She stared, galvanised. Finally the tricorder had picked up signs of Vulcan body heat. Another triumph to add to her tally. He was close by now…

She looked around, moving cautiously past the consoles and checking the floor behind each one. Still there was no sign. And then she saw a door. At first it had been hidden behind one of the projections in the wall, but now she had moved around she saw it clearly – a smooth panel the same pale green as the rest of the room. She moved closer and the readings grew stronger, each beat of the Vulcan heart sending a spike off the top of the screen. She turned the sensitivity down automatically, and continued moving towards the door. Those clean, used consoles made her nervous. The clear, well-trodden aisles made her nervous.

She saw that the door had a handle. No… No, not a handle. It was some kind of bolt or latch – a flat spar of silver metal firmly pushed down into a receiving depression. She touched it with trembling, dirty hands, and drew it up.

The door slid open soundlessly, retracting into the wall, revealing a dark space beyond. The stench hit her at once – the smell of a toilet abandoned by cleaners but not by users, of stale urine and worse. She recoiled momentarily, but as a nurse she was used to vibrant smells and she pushed away her instinctive reaction, trying to focus on what was important. The door, she noticed, had no handle or fastenings on the inside. If it shut, she would be trapped.

She picked up a solid rectangular block from beside one of the consoles. A stool she assumed, and the seat was not dusty in the slightest. It was bulky, but light and strong, and she laid it down on its side in the doorway to prevent the door from closing automatically. Then she opened the tricorder again and looked about by the door for a panel similar to the light switch she had found in the last room. She found it and touched it, and the light stuttered and flickered and finally came into life.

'Spock!'

He was the first thing she saw, lying on his side near the opposite wall of the tiny room – a storeroom perhaps, empty but still cramped. His eyes were closed, his legs hunched up and his arm curled about them as if to protect himself. His other arm was crooked about his neck. He did not react to her cry. His eyelids did not even flicker.

She moved closer, readjusting the tricorder to sense a full spectrum of readings rather than just picking up his slow, steady heartbeat. The smell in the room enclosed around her. He had obviously been shut in this place for some time with no access to sanitation. He had used a corner of the room as a toilet and was lying as far as possible from that place, but the smell pervaded the room.

The readings from his body were bewildering. He had lost weight – that much was obvious without instruments – but his heartbeat was strong, his breathing regular, and he showed no sign of physical injury. There were no bruises on him, no cuts or scrapes, but the soles of his feet were ingrained with dirt, and dirt was smudged over his arms and legs and smeared over his hip.

She knelt by him and touched his arm, shaking him lightly.

'Spock,' she said, in a voice louder than she was comfortable with. 'Mr Spock!'

There was no reaction from him. If he had been sleeping naturally, surely he would have awoken?

She began a deep body scan, seeking out artificial chemicals, poisons, medicines – but there was nothing unusual in his bloodstream but a lower level of vitamins than was healthy, and anaemia that was bordering on severe. She gave him a shot to balance out some of the loss, and then reloaded her hypo with a dose of radiation protection she had brought for the purpose. After almost forty days his original dose had long since worn off.

She sat back on her heels again, regarding him. There was a slight flush on his upper arm where she had given him the hypo, but that was the extent of reaction she had gained from him since finding him here.

She adjusted the tricorder again and directed the scan towards his brain. He was not sleeping. That was clear from the readings. There was a very low level of activity in his cerebral cortex, but activity enough that it was obvious he was conscious, if unresponsive. She tapped a finger on the floor in a regular rhythm and noted the spike of activity in his cerebellum. He was listening, and probably automatically timing and analysing the simple pattern.

'Spock,' she said, bringing her mouth close to his ear. 'I need you to wake up. We need to get away from here.'

Again, the spike of reaction in his brain activity, but no visible reaction at all. He continued still and silent, his eyes resolutely closed.

She bit her lip into her mouth, considering. There was nothing obvious wrong with him – but going by the depletion of vitamins in his body, the weight loss, and the evidence of the waste in the corner, he had been in this room for some time, presumably receiving some food and water but very little care. There was a half-full carafe of stagnant-looking water not far away from Spock's body, and sticks of something dense and orange that may have been some kind of ration bars, indicating that although he had been attended, the attendance was not regular. Solitary confinement such as this appeared to be could have drastic effects on its victims.

Ordinarily she would call for beam-up and he would be being treated in sick bay within minutes. Ordinarily she would have given lengthy consideration to the mode of treatment – or would hand over the case to Dr McCoy and let him make the decisions. But her communicator still crackled with static, and the evidence suggested that Spock had been held captive by someone who cared little for his welfare, but who also might reappear at any time. She could not carry him – he had to be able to walk.

She sighed, and opened her medical bag again, perusing the available options.

She had cordrazine in there. She hesitated over the small red capsule, running Spock's human-Vulcan physiology through her head and recalling discussions with McCoy on the subject of using the drug on Vulcans. Primarily used for heart conditions, it did have a strong stimulatory effect. It might be enough to jerk Spock out of this strange catatonia, just enough to make him respond to the urgency of the moment.

_One cc._ She set the hypo carefully to one cc and touched it to his arm. A second of hesitation and then she depressed the trigger and the drug hissed into his arm.

The effect was instantaneous. His eyes flicked open at the same time that his heart rate lurched and he stared wildly at her, looking as if he had woken from a nightmare. She tried to reassure him, putting her hand on his arm to steady him, but he simply stared at her, jerking upright to sit with his back against the wall and his arms curled about his hitched up legs.

'Spock,' she said clearly, looking at him in concern.

Her eyes flicked from his face to the readings on the tricorder and back again. The reaction in his body was subsiding, his heart rate steadying.

'Commander Spock, do you know who I am?' she asked him, looking closely into his eyes.

Slowly, mercifully, he nodded. Relief cascaded through her – although his eyes were still distant, the expression in them veiled and cut off. He would not look directly at her.

'Have you been down here all this time?' she asked him while going about the business of checking his pulse for a physical reassurance of his condition and seeing that his pupils were returning to normal after their unnatural dilation.

His lips moved momentarily, but he did not speak. Looking down again, she saw that his hands were shaking.

'We need to get out of here,' she said. 'Can you walk?'

He looked about slowly, taking in the stool wedging the door open and the light that glowed from the ceiling, and then slowly his eyes settling on the mess in the corner of the room, and then dropping again.

'Mr Spock,' she said, putting her hand under his arm and prompting him to stand, noting abstractedly that his temperature was a little lower than usual.

He stood unsteadily, allowing her to hold him, looking down at his feet as if he were amazed at their existence.

'Come on,' she said, urging him to walk.

He followed her out of the room, stepping over the stool with difficulty. She let go of him and he stood, passive. With a sudden afterthought she stepped back into the room, bending over the orange ration bars and scanning them to be certain that they were fit for consumption. Not ideal nutrition for either a human or Vulcan, she noted, but they were better than no food at all, and would last a few extra days on top of the rations she had brought with her. She scooped them up and crammed them into her pack, then turned out the light, returned the stool to its original position and carefully closed the door behind her, dropping the catch back into its niche.

'I want to get out of this room,' she said. 'I don't know when they might be back.'

Spock looked left and right slowly, looking from the door back into the dark stairwell and right to another door on the other side of the room.

'The stairwell's half-destroyed – it's not used,' Christine said, leading him towards it. 'But I want to get somewhere they won't chance across us. We can't get out that way. We need to work out if there's another way to the surface. But for a minute I just want to sit still and think.'

She took him to the shadow of the stairs and moved him back towards the dark recess where the concrete began spiralling up. He sat without prompting and she let her eyes linger on him, worry rippling in her mind. He was either unconscious or unconcerned about his nakedness and the filthy state of his body. A month's growth of beard shaded his jaw, and his hair was longer than he would prefer it.

He looked back at her and there was a moment of connection between their eyes. She smiled reassuringly.

'I'm just going to switch out the light in there,' she told him. 'Otherwise they'll know…'

He nodded silently and she smiled again, then pressed her hand to the light switch in the computer room. The place sank into darkness again and she opened up the tricorder, making her way back to Spock with care. In the ghostly light of the screen his face looked gaunter than ever, and a stab of sadness pierced her.

'Is it that you can't speak, or just – ?'

He looked at her passively and she held the tricorder towards him, doing a close scan of his vocal cords and then of those areas of his brain relating to speech.

'Nothing wrong with the Broca's,' she murmured. 'You should be able to produce speech.' She sighed. 'What did they do to you?'

Spock's eyes dropped momentarily, a flicker of _something_ passing over his face.

'Mr Spock,' she said, reaching out instinctively to touch her hand to his face.

He shied away as if he had been burnt, a moment of panic lighting in his eyes. Intrigued, suppressing her urge to utter apologies, she began to scan the telepathic centres near the front of his brain. The readings scrolled onto the screen and she turned the tricorder so that he could see it too.

'Signs of recent stimulation in the Stovak labyrinth,' she said, and he nodded very slowly, as if reluctant to admit to that truth. 'They melded with you?'

He pressed his lips together, his eyes becoming cast down again.

'There's no brain damage that I can pick up with my tricorder,' she said, unsure as to whether she was trying to reassure him or herself. 'No significant damage from the radiation. Mr Spock, have you spent any time out of that room? Do you have any idea of a way out of here? Which way did you come in?'

He turned his head towards the darkness above them where the staircase twisted up into broken nothingness. His hand rubbed at his wrist, as if remembering an old hurt. And then he said in something just above a whisper, 'I fell.'

Christine's joy at those two words was incandescent inside her. It was very little, but it was a start. His voice sounded hoarse and ragged, as if he had been screaming with full force, but it was, at least, a voice.

She touched his arm, but the responsiveness was gone.

'Mr Spock, do you know of a way out of here?' she asked him.

In the semi darkness it was all she could do to make out his minimal reactions. His eyes flicked back to the computer room, but if anything he seemed further introverted.

She handed him her flask and he took it and drunk swiftly. She offered him one of her ration bars, but he did not move to accept it.

'It's Vulcan-approved,' she said with a smile. 'Completely vegetarian.'

Still he did not take it, and she sighed. She had known Spock long enough to know that trying to persuade him to eat when he did not want to was a hopeless cause, unless she could back herself up with the threat of medical confinement. Here she had no backup at all.

She set the tricorder for a long range scan, reassuring herself that there were no living creatures within range (whatever the range was with the radiation-addled sensors, she reminded herself grimly), and then stood up.

'Come on,' she said softly. We need to start moving.'

Spock stood, just as unsteady as before, and followed her back out of the stairwell and across the darkened room.


	3. Chapter 3

The door opposite opened onto an equally dark space. Turning the tricorder about in her hands, Christine saw the light shine off walls that were close on either side.

'A corridor,' she murmured under her breath, and Spock nodded. 'You've been along here?' she intuited, and he inclined his head again. She saw tension in his jaw and neck muscles and knew that whatever he had been along here for had not been a pleasant experience.

'Do you have any idea which way to go?' she asked hopefully.

He shook his head. She scanned the surrounding area for life-signs, and found none. She glanced at Spock's shadowed form and then began to walk down the corridor, feeling as though she were leading a psychiatric patient between wards. She did not want to think of Spock in that way. She did not want to think that whatever had been done to him to leave him as this silent, introverted labyrinth might be permanent or long-term.

She ran through possible causes in her mind for this apparently selective mutism. It was obvious that he _could_ talk. He had spoken those two words earlier – _I fell_. What had allowed him to say that much? Was it that the falling had been _before_, and all that was bad had happened afterwards? Or was it just a chance moment when he had felt able to speak? Perhaps there would be other such moments when he would allow her to hear his voice, hoarse and ruined as it was.

That hoarseness lingered in her mind. _As if he had been screaming_, she thought again. She shuddered to think what might make Spock scream. Whatever had happened it was almost certainly mental trauma. There was barely a sign of physical abuse apart from the results of neglect.

She turned towards the left as the corridor forked, and Spock's hand suddenly gripped her arm with surprising force. She stopped abruptly, peering into the darkness ahead.

'You've been down there?' she asked, turning the light on his face.

He nodded. He looked paler than ever. Then his lips worked as if he were fighting against a great impediment and after a moment he said, 'They are more…'

She stared, hoping she was successfully hiding her frustration.

'They are more?' she repeated. 'What? More likely to be down there?'

He inclined his head, and turned resolutely towards the right.

_Looks like we're going right, then_, she thought, but she kept her thoughts to herself. She was sure Spock would not appreciate the flippancy of the remark. She was almost certain, though, that it would take a herd of bull elephants to pull Spock down the left-hand corridor. She had rarely seen him afraid, but he was afraid of that.

They continued to walk, the tension prickling at Christine's back and legs as she moved. This place felt like a set from a horror film, a deserted and decaying facility that nevertheless had life – hostile life – lurking in the shadows.

She kept checking the tricorder for life signs as they moved. If there were people down here, and there must be some, they were either few, or infrequent visitors. Nothing appeared on the tricorder screen and the dirt and rubble grew thicker as they walked. She felt increasingly as if she were waiting for someone to leap out of the darkness and grab at her, no matter how unlikely that eventuality.

She had set the tricorder to scan for life, food, and water. They seemed to have been walking for hours through this dark maze and the thought of being forever trapped down here was starting to prise uneasily at her composure. The best way to ensure survival was to ensure a supply of food and drink, and after some time a spike on the screen showed a definite water source nearby. She sighed with relief and showed the screen to Spock. The water in her flask was growing low with two of them drinking it.

He looked towards a door to their left, and cautiously she pushed it open.

'Empty,' she murmured, checking and rechecking the tricorder for life signs.

She felt at the side of the doorway for the obligatory light switch, and found it – but this time no light flickered on. The increasing rubble in this area was obviously a sign of a greater neglect. She sighed and walked forward, holding the tricorder high and letting the meagre light shine into the air.

'I – think it might be a bathroom,' she said in a low voice as the light glinted off metallic objects nearby. 'You can see better than me in this light, I'm sure. What do you think?'

Spock stepped forward to join her, looking about himself with a guarded expression. He seemed to be waiting for something to happen, for the lights to snap on or for one of his anonymous captors to appear from the gloom.

He reached out tentatively towards one of the metallic objects and touched a small lever that Christine had not been able to see. Water gushed forth, and he started back.

Christine pointed the tricorder towards the water and scanned it.

'It's clean,' she said in a low voice. 'Drinkable.'

She opened her flask and held it under the flow until it was full again. Then she cleaned her hands and washed the dust and dirt from her face and swept water into her mouth with her cupped hands. Finally she straightened and looked at Spock. He was standing motionless, staring at her but making no move to join her at the basin.

'Mr Spock, are you going to drink?' she prompted him.

He took a step forward, but made no attempt to scoop water from the tap. She smiled encouragingly, and then took hold of his hand lightly about the wrist, moving it under the water. He started briefly but did not resist as she carefully washed some of the dirt from both his hands. It was hard in the faint blue light to tell what was clean and what was not, but she could feel the difference as his palms and fingers became softer, and slick with the feeling of water over clean skin.

She hesitated, looking down at his hands, resisting the urge to help clean off the rest of his body. In his state she did not want to risk him growing too cold. He was trembling already – not with cold, she knew, but with exhaustion or shock or whatever stress was assailing him.

'You need to sleep,' she said decisively.

He looked at her with an expression that almost certainly meant denial. She raised the tricorder and scanned him.

'You're malnourished, you haven't eaten anything since I found you, and you're suffering from – ' She faltered, at a loss as to how to describe his condition. ' – from some kind of undiagnosed trauma. Your brain is also showing signs of severe sleep deprivation. You need rest,' she said firmly.

Spock looked down at his shaking hands and then wordlessly held one out towards her pack. Her eyebrows raised in surprise. She got out a ration bar, carefully choosing one of her own rather than the sickly looking orange ones with which he had been supplied, and held it out to him. Slowly, as if he were consuming ashes, he ate it.

'You still need to rest,' she told him afterwards, holding out the flask of water to him.

The look he gave her then was briefly rebellious, but there was a greater aching tiredness that overwhelmed it and settled in his eyes, drawing him away from her again.

'For now, Mr Spock, I am your medical senior,' she said firmly. 'Sleep. That is an order. It's not logical to go on without rest. You're getting clumsy. We'll be found, and you'll end up right back where I found you.'

That seemed to reach him. There was a tightening of the muscles in his face, and he looked about the ruined bathroom warily despite the darkness being all-consuming.

'Stay there for a minute,' she said, and she began to make a careful investigation of the periphery of the room, looking for any other doors out of the place. There were none but the one by which they had entered. She discovered a number of metallic vents set very low to the floor which she speculated might be toilets, but other than those and the rank of basins there was nothing in the room.

'There's no other way in,' she assured Spock. 'Come on over here. I want to be near the door, in case – '

He moved over to the wall and bent, brushing away dirt fastidiously with the palm of his hand, and then settling on his side on the floor. Christine watched him closely as he closed his eyes, suspecting that he would feign sleep rather than fall into it. She opened up her medical kit and shone the light on the capsules inside before selecting a light sedative. It would be enough to kick him over into a natural sleep, but would not impede his ability to react if she needed to wake him.

His eyes flickered open as she touched the hypo to him.

'Just to help you sleep,' she said softly, depressing the trigger.

There was a moment of betrayed anger in his eyes and then they drifted closed again, and he slept.

Christine sat, watching him. She felt guilty at giving him the sedative without allowing him the option of refusing, but in her judgement he couldn't continue much longer with the levels of stress he was experiencing without collapse. At least now his heart rate was settling again and she could see the lines of tension disappearing from his body.

Finally she set the tricorder to alert her if it detected life signs and then closed the screen, leaving them in darkness. She could sit here gazing at the faint light reflecting from Spock's limbs for hours, but it made sense for her to get some rest too. She leant back against the wall, the tricorder held against her body, and closed her eyes.

Time drifted past, but she did not sleep. She listened. She listened to Spock's quiet, regular breathing, and to the odd creaking sounds that metal made when the temperature changed around it, and to the occasional scatter of debris falling to the floor. She listened for footsteps or speech, but she heard nothing of that kind.

It was merciful, perhaps. Merciful that this place was mostly deserted, that the beings who had so traumatised Spock were nowhere to be seen. But she found herself wishing, almost hoping, that someone would make themselves seen, even if just so she knew what she was hiding from. If they knew enemies were in one place, they could be sure to stay in another. This way she was waiting, always waiting, for the sudden appearance of an alien being.

She had no idea what these people looked like. She had no idea even if the people living down here were the original inhabitants of this planet, driven underground by their war, or perhaps others, come here by chance just as she and Spock had. She had seen plenty of beings from plenty of worlds and her mind conjured images as mundane as human-identical species and as alien as tentacled and boneless beings that moved by osmosis. Uncertainty was a terrible thing.

Spock stirred restlessly and she flipped open the tricorder, thanking the lord for the almost inexhaustible battery packs that these things had. She turned the bluish light onto his face and saw his eyes scrunched shut and his mouth twisted in a very un-Vulcan grimace. She reached out a hand to brush the hair from his forehead, allowing herself a gesture in his sleep that she would almost certainly have never made while he was conscious, and –

_She was Spock, moving through a parched landscape, turning, turning, seeing only ruins that crackled with radioactive residue. Regret rippled up in him, and was pushed down again, pushed away._

_So like humans, so like humans… _

_He was speaking through his communicator, a cord of desperation rising; crackling was the only response._

'_So like humans, Captain. I require beam up. I am lost.'_

_He was lost. There was something behind him. There was something coming. He couldn't see it. Illogical to be scared. So much was not rational here. Dry, broken walls, the captain smiling at him placidly from somewhere obscure. No help, and something behind him, prickling at his back._

_A figure stepping up to him, vaguely humanoid, Spock's height, its eyes sharp and too close, its eyes seeing him and not allowing him to turn away. Its body furred. Quite beautiful, like a jewel, catching the sun with a million strands of iridescent hair, patterned in red and leaf green and rich, royal purple. The iridescence blue and shimmering whenever it turned under the diamond sun._

_That noise coming from somewhere, fluid and ornate and incomprehensible, like a song. Like a song that meant nothing and left him blank with confusion, coming from what some might call a mouth._

_Naked. It was naked. He was clothed. Too close. Its eyes were close to him, its fingers prying at the looseness of his clothes, and he was lying now, naked. The ceiling was too low, the light dim. Those sharp eyes close to him, staring into him, unfolding his thoughts and leafing through each one, quick, careless, no compassion… The curiosity, the fear, piercing him. His throat was raw. His voice was searing in his ears. Vulcans do not scream… They do not scream…_

_Quiet. They might not come if I am quiet. Stay small. Quiet. Don't scream._

_Needles threading through his brain, each cord pulling, the pain bypassing all control. Scream. Quiet. His voice searing in his ears. Take what you want, I do not have it. Take what you want… Scream – _

She was thrust out of his mind. Physically she found herself recoiling from the impact with the wall behind her, her head throbbing with the sudden blow and her breath coming in ragged gasps. The tricorder lay open on the floor, the blue light angled upwards, and Spock's scream was fracturing the silence. She pulled herself back to him, touched his arms, careful, so careful, to keep her hands away from his face.

'Shh,' she urged him, tears stinging in her eyes from the pain or the dream or... 'Spock, shh, Spock. They'll hear you…'

The scream choked and retched in his throat and he pressed his hands over his mouth, forcibly trying to stop the sound until it died away to nothing but small, tattered breaths.

'It's all right,' she whispered, instinctively stroking the rock hard muscles of his arm with one hand, lifting the tricorder and scanning for life with the other. 'It's all right. Nothing close to us. It's all right. Shh…'

He stared at her, his eyes wide and strange in the blue light, with some kind of realisation evident in his expression.

'They're telepaths,' she whispered to him. 'I think your telepathic centres have been over-stimulated. You're very receptive to touch telepathy. You've lost the ability to block.'

He swallowed hard, his hands pressed over his mouth still – and then suddenly he twisted away, retching a thin mixture of water and bile onto the floor.

She waited for him as he lay there breathing hard, his stomach spasming but nothing more able to come.

'I touched your face,' she said. 'I'm sorry. I saw your dream.'

He turned back to her, his trembling hands lowered now, his face sheet white. Then he closed his eyes and settled back down onto the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest, one arm wrapped around them and the other around his neck.

Christine waited a while before scanning him. As she suspected, he was not asleep but in a trance-like state, conscious but passive as she had found him earlier. After sharing his dream she did not blame him, and had no intention of administering a sedative again. It was little wonder that his readings showed prolonged sleep deprivation – he had done it to himself to protect himself from the dreams.

She leant back against the wall, leaving the tricorder open now to provide her with a constant light. Her head throbbed and she felt like crying. Suddenly all of the cuts and bruises and scrapes, and the overwhelming tiredness of having been walking and searching and then walking again in darkness for hours overwhelmed her. She dropped her head onto her knees and let herself weep silently, giving up holding herself rigid, giving up trying to forget all the small pains and the jittering stress of this place, and of caring for this psychologically damaged version of Spock.

After a while she lifted her head and saw Spock, eyes open, watching her unwaveringly. She was glad he had retained the ability to awaken himself. She had not been looking forward to having to jolt him out of his trance with cordrazine again.

She gave him a wan smile, wiping the tears away with the heels of her hands.

'It's all right,' she said. 'Just a very human way of dealing with stress.'

He sat up against the wall, hunching his legs up, looking for the first time slightly self-conscious about his nudity. Then he took the tricorder and held it in his hands, staring at the screen as if overcome by a memory he had lost long ago.

He looked up at her, as if he very much wanted to speak but could not bring himself to, and then nodded towards the floor.

She smiled. 'Are you telling me I can sleep?' she asked, and he nodded, lifting the tricorder as if to indicate that he would keep monitoring.

'Okay,' she said uneasily. She had no idea how long it had been since she slept. She had lost track of time.

She huddled down on the floor, grateful that it was reasonably warm down here, and pillowed her head on her hand. Spock had not done that, she realised. A cultural difference, perhaps, or an indication of his mental state that he did not care for comfort?

She closed her eyes. Could she trust him to keep watch? Despite the nightmare, the sleep seemed to have done him good. Just seeing him handle the tricorder felt like a barrier overcome. It seemed like a part of him restored.

His dream images revolved in her head. That beautiful, somehow sinister, iridescent-furred creature and the eerie song that it had produced… The pain tunnelling into his mind, and the knowledge that he would do anything to make it stop. _Quiet, don't speak, don't let them hear me…_

She drifted into sleep, caught by Spock's fear, her lips sealed closed.


	4. Chapter 4

She woke with his hand on her arm and the bluish light of the tricorder shining on her face. She stared stupidly for a moment at his hand, noticing his over-long nails and the feeling of his fingers touching her so lightly.

'How long have I been asleep?' she murmured, still pushing the remnants of dreams from her mind.

He looked at her, mouth pressed shut, and the memory of his silence came over her. But he straightened two fingers from the grip around the tricorder, and she asked, 'Two hours?'

He nodded, and then turned the tricorder towards her. She took it from him, looking at the screen, and smiled. Somewhere beneath the shell-shocked carapace there was still Spock. He had made use of his phenomenal memory to create a three dimensional map of all the corridors they had travelled, marking the computer room at one end and their location at the other. Now Christine could see that they had walked three point seven nine miles in this stumbling darkness, through branching corridors, and that they were roughly a mile away from their starting point in a straight line.

'We need to find stairs or an elevator,' she said, studying the map.

They could walk as far as they liked, but readings showed they were still at the same depth. They had to get closer to ground level. She wondered if they were moving deeper into the radiation zone, or closer to its edge. Even if they gained the surface they would not be safe until they could contact the ship.

Hungry, she fumbled in her pack for ration bars. Some of the orange, alien ones tumbled out and Spock turned away from the sight or the scent of them.

'They're not harmful,' she assured him. 'They don't fulfil all your nutritional needs, but they're not bad for you. A little like candy, maybe,' she added with a spontaneous smile.

It was obvious that Spock did not appreciate the analogy. She pushed the bars back into her pack and offered him a Starfleet-issue bar. He took it without enthusiasm and began to slowly nibble at it as she ate hers with enthusiasm.

'Not quite plomeek,' he said with halting difficulty.

Astonished, she laughed, full of joy both at his speech and at the fact that he seemed to be attempting a joke.

'No, they're not plomeek,' she said. 'But you can't have it all. At least they're not orange.'

At that, Spock paused in his eating, his eyes moving to the pack where one of the orange bars sat at the top. He looked queasy, and she regretted bringing them up. But then he turned eyes away from them again and resumed his slow, reluctant consumption of the Starfleet bar.

'I am sorry,' he said after a while.

She turned to stare at him. 'Sorry? What for?'

'I am not fit…'

The apology was clear in his eyes, far more eloquent than his halting speech. And behind that there was – what? A sadness or tiredness, perhaps, or a memory of something he did not care to remember. She thought of those bright, bird-like creatures again, and of his screams as they reached into his mind, beyond all ability to control. How cruel to strip him of his disciplines, to probe about in his mind like a bird searching for worms in mud.

'Why can't you speak?' she asked him curiously. 'What did they do?'

He closed his eyes briefly as if lost for a response. And then he opened them and lifted his hand hesitantly towards her face.

'A meld?' she asked. 'Are you sure?'

He nodded, tilting his head a little to one side, obviously asking for permission.

'If you're sure you want to – go ahead, Mr Spock,' she nodded.

His fingers touched her face –

_She was Spock. He was walking through a dark space, the dust and dirt thick in his throat and nose. Curious. The light from the hatch at his back, just enough light reflecting from the walls to give him some sense of space._

_He fell. Clutched out, fingertips scraping on edges. Hit. Pain skewed through his wrist. A sprain, he thought._ _He sat momentarily, assessing the bruises, feeling the wetness of blood on his hands. Then checking the tricorder at his side. Opening it, using the light from the screen as a flashlight. He saw the curved stairwell and stairs leading down, and he stood and followed them._

_The space opened up into a room. The light reflected faintly from pale walls. Shapes in the centre of the room. Desks, perhaps…_

_He found the square panel on the wall, pressed his fingers to it. Light flickered into the room and settled to a manageable dimness. Quickly he assessed what was before him. Computers, ranks of them, buttons marked with a language possibly based on pictograms. Highly abstract, but yes, he could see signs that possibly equated to sun or light, to birth, creation or perhaps simply starting up, to death or switching off._

_He began to scan the images, recording them in the tricorder for further study. If decipherable, they would provide a fascinating insight into this dead culture._

_He touched a button near the _birth_ pictogram, and the computer hummed, stuttered, and then died again. Curious, favouring his injured right wrist and using his left hand, he prised open a panel near the floor and began to investigate the circuitry he found inside._

_Simple. Yes, simple enough. He should be able to correct the problems he found and extract whatever it was these computers held._

_He began to fiddle with the workings, seeing success unfolding as he did. Finally he stood and touched the button again. The computer hummed. The hum increased. A screen rose from the console and more of those pictographic symbols flickered across it. He angled his tricorder towards it, recording all that came onto the screen._

_There was a noise to his left. He looked. A creature, bipedal, covered in shimmering fur patterned in red, blue and green. Something birdlike about its eyes. He stared for a moment, processing the surprise. He had not expected living beings down here. And then he said, 'I am Spock.'_

_A whirlwind noise of song emitted from the creature. Angry, piercing. The emotion was fully readable although his universal translator made no sense of it. The creature covered the distance in seconds. Its eyes, close to him, glittering. And then – _

_Claws in his mind, the contact like a slap. At first, feelings. Emotions drilling into him, drilling past his conscious mind, finding the subconscious, bypassing controls. Hatred. Fear. Disgust. Taboo. Flagrant. Disgust._

_Slowly picking out meanings. His voice, unmelodic, coarse, low – disgusting, offensive. Cloth on his body. Disgusting. Daring to make that noise. Disgust._

_And pain cording through his mind. Threads pulled through the softness of his mind, trailing fire and blood. His scream echoing somewhere outside his skull. Punishment. Intruder. Pain._

_On his knees, shaking. More of them around him. Their claws in his mind. The removal of the cloth from his skin. Their claws prising through him, tearing through him, eager claws ripping the leaves of a book, rifling through all that his mind held._

_Realisation. Something clear. The creature has fixed the computer. The creature knows. The creature's mind. He is disgusting, but he is of use. His mind is full. Put him away. Put him away, come back later, find more in his mind. Perhaps this is _the hope_ that was spoken of. Perhaps things will change._

_Dragging. Their thoughts pulling out of his, serrated wire pulled from something soft, pulling shreds of flesh. The jerk of withdrawal. Lying gasping on the ground, his hands tight, his voice swallowed somewhere deep inside. Darkness. Crawling to his knees after a time, shaking, exploring the darkness with his outstretched hands to find a small room, a tight enclosure and a door that would not open. His mind reeling and his voice tucked somewhere deep inside. Falling back to the floor, his cheek pressed on the ground, eyes closed, his mind shaking…_

Christine gasped, her breath coming short and frantic, blinking to see Spock watching her, his hand withdrawn and a look of apology on his face.

'Oh,' she said slowly, unable to verbalise a better response to what she had seen. Then she said, 'I understand. I can't imagine…'

But she _could_ imagine, having felt everything from Spock's perspective. The lingering memory of his mental pain still made her short of breath and her hands were shaking.

'Is the sound of our speech so terrible to them?' she asked, although she knew the answer.

Spock nodded silently. He seemed to have reverted a little more into the introverted state after reliving that memory.

'Unmelodic,' he said slowly. 'A great offence…'

'They only communicate meaning through telepathy. Emotions are expressed through their song… That's why their written language is pictograms – there's no sound to represent!'

Spock nodded, his hands entwined together and his face downcast.

'They'd make a fascinating study,' she said, and Spock looked at her. She could see the glint in his eyes – despite the trauma of contact, he agreed. 'I wonder who could communicate with them. The Medusans, perhaps… Someone who could cope with their level of emotion, and their way of seeing things…'

Spock nodded again. Then he pushed himself up from his seated position. As he stood the light from the tricorder glinted from the sinews of his legs and buttocks and Christine found herself momentarily catching her breath and then ruthlessly clamping down on the attraction. The last thing Spock needed was to think she was taking advantage of this situation.

She wondered if the Talasees had ever developed cloth, despite their apparent lack of clothing. It was likely, she supposed, but they hadn't yet come across anything that Spock could put into service as any kind of covering. Perhaps it didn't matter. Spock was still quite unselfconscious. Perhaps growing less so, and perhaps as he returned to himself it was growing harder for her to confine her appraisals of his body to merely medical interest – but at the moment they could do nothing about it.

'You washed,' she said, covering her embarrassment with words despite the fact that he almost certainly had not noticed her look.

He nodded, rubbing one hand down his arm as if pleased with the feeling of his clean skin. The desire for cleanliness, the frugal use of language, the modifications to the tricorder – they were all signs that Spock was slowly clawing back some of himself from the wreck that the Talasees had left him.

He looked at her and she caught a spark of – something – as if she had caught a thought that was not hers. She seemed to see herself briefly as though through Spock's eyes, her face smudged with dirt and her hair in disarray, and there was an unexpected overtone of affection modifying that momentary glimpse.

'Mr Spock,' she began, and he looked at her with a more deliberate gaze, total innocence in his face. 'Nothing,' she said quickly, confused. 'I – should have a wash too, and then we ought to get our things together and leave this place. We need to get to the surface or find more food before we start to really need it.'

He nodded, his gaze seeming to see right through her skin and bones and into her thoughts and feelings. _Heightened telepathic responses_, she reminded herself, turning away. _He's not shielding as normal. Maybe reflecting my own thoughts somehow…_

She bent over the basin and let the water flow, splashing it over her face and neck and trying to drive those lingering thoughts out of her mind. But again she caught it, a heated feeling of wanting contact, wanting to be close, teasing at the edges of her thoughts.

'Okay,' she said abruptly, straightening up again, shaking those out thoughts out of her mind.

She went and fetched the flask and refilled it at the tap, studiously avoiding Spock's eyes.

'Sooner we move on, the better.'

He nodded, watching her with a lingering gaze as she sorted out her pack and slung the tricorder across her body.

They turned to the left when they exited the room and continued to walk up the corridor in the oppressive semi-darkness, occasionally opening doors they found to see if they led to a new avenue of escape, but mostly just walking and walking, and hoping for stairs.

The rubble grew thicker underfoot and Christine kept a close watch on Spock, aware that his bare feet were at risk of injury. She tried to light as much of the ground as possible with the tricorder screen. The responses from the device were becoming weaker, indicating that they were passing through an area of higher radiation, and the tricorder was becoming less and less useful as anything but a flashlight.

'Okay,' she murmured finally as they reached the end of this particular corridor. Three rooms to their right and left had already proved too damaged to enter and the amount of destruction was becoming disturbing.

'We'd better pray the way's passable through this door,' she said in a low voice, putting her hand out to touch the panel. 'If we have to backtrack I don't know where we can go…'

'Reinforced,' Spock murmured, pressing his own hand to the panel. It appeared to be made of some kind of dull metal. 'Different.'

Christine looked closer. Spock was right. This door did look different to the others they had encountered. It was certainly stronger looking, and the edges were rough, as if it had been fashioned for the entranceway after a weaker door had failed.

'Could it be lead?' she asked curiously. 'Maybe to protect against the radiation. It's high here, I'm sure.'

Spock nodded, murmuring, 'Possible.'

Christine examined the tricorder again, trying to elicit some response, but it was useless to attempt to analyse the door. Spock's 'Possible,' was enough for her. As quiet as he was, he did not seem to have lost his analytical powers, just his ability to express them fluently.

'We need to go through it,' she said. 'We don't have a choice. There isn't any other way.'

Spock nodded, but his lips were pressed together as if the idea did not appeal to him in the slightest. Christine wondered if there was a firm reason behind his disquiet, but she did not want to press him on what might be an emotional response.

'Can you help?' she asked as she tried the handle. It was stiff and the door was heavy, lending credence to the idea that it was lead.

Spock moved to stand beside her, his fingers closing about hers on the handle. She let herself feel them for a moment, warm and strong and surprisingly steady around hers – and then she turned her mind back to the task at hand, and began to pull.

The door scraped open with agonising slowness, and as it did a brilliant light pressed through the crack, dazzling Christine beyond all ability to see. Spock's hand clenched on hers, hard enough to bruise, and then he jerked away, dragging her behind him, pelting through the darkness back the way they had come as if hell itself had opened up on the other side of that door.


	5. Chapter 5

Christine had no idea where they were running to. The light from the swinging tricorder gave her no chance to make out the surroundings, and eventually the movement made the screen slide closed and they were left in darkness. Spock's arm was about her waist, strong and insistent, not allowing her to move except for where he wished her to go. The debris on the corridor floor crunched beneath her feet and no matter how hard she tried to listen for anyone – any_thing_ – following, she could not be sure of what she heard beyond the noise of their own footfalls.

Finally Spock jerked to a stop, his arm slipping from her waist but his fingers almost instantly closing round her wrist, and she heard his other hand scrabbling against the wall. There was the click and then the wrenching scrape of a damaged door being opened and he pulled her through, pushing the door closed behind them and then standing, panting, against it.

'Do you think – ' she began in a ragged whisper.

His grip became vice-like on her wrist and his other hand pressed over her mouth, stifling her words. She could feel the trembling of his fingers as he touched her lips and she fell silent as much in deference to his panic as to any perceived threat. Her sides were heaving, and it was all she could do to breathe through the press of his hand. His apparent terror was terrifying in itself. An out-of-control and emotionally-led Spock was not something with which she wanted to do battle.

She waited, listening, certain that he was listening too. She could hear nothing from the corridor outside. She could feel the length of Spock's body pressed against her from behind, his heart beating against her ribs, his head alongside hers and his breath hot on her cheek. There was no sound but their breathing.

Slowly she moved her hand down to the tricorder and opened the screen. Spock started at the sudden light but, thankfully, he did not react more than that. The light shone off fallen beams and broken spars of wood only a few feet in front of them. This was one of those rooms they had judged too damaged to enter.

She tried to speak again and Spock's hand tensed over her mouth. She took a risk, and bit him.

Startled, he withdrew his hand. She could feel his shock at her action through the sudden jerk of his body against hers.

'If you won't let me speak, meld,' she said in a low, angry voice.

There was a hesitation, and then his fingers crept up again and touched hard against her face, finding the appropriate spots at temple and cheekbone.

_A whirl of impulses. Hard, hard lines trying to catch and control. Fear. Rationality. Fear. Logic. Fear of the pain, fear of glittering eyes, fear of the coming, the coming…_

Christine cut across those tumultuous thoughts with her own, the chill of her mind-voice acting like a slap.

_ Are they following us? _

_ Unknown. _

_The image of their coming, their glittering eyes, iridescent coats shining, pressing near, too near. The pull of their thoughts like barbed wire through soft flesh…_

_ Did you see them through the door? _ she asked, cutting over those loose and weaving thoughts again.

A hesitation. And then, _I saw them. I sensed their minds. Both. _

_How many? _

_Unknown. _

_Images of them, bleached out in the sudden light, the turn of their heads toward the opening door, the sudden focussing of their thoughts, reaching out, tendrils of thought seeking to entwine with his. The opening of their mouth-things to begin the keening of their surprise and fright. The movement of them towards the door to the dark-place, to the old-place. The fear of them…_

_ Spock. _She spoke soothingly into his mind this time, trying to capture what there was of him that could still control. _You need to calm and focus. We're alone. They're not here. There's no noise from outside. We need to work out what to do. _

_Hesitation… His mind working… _

Unconsciously Christine thought of Spock standing on the _Enterprise_ bridge, in control, confident, directing those under his command without faltering. And she felt Spock capture that image, drawing it into himself and remembering what it was to be _Spock_. Outside, in the physical world, she felt him straighten, his arm loosening from her body.

His hand was still on her face, his fingers still pressed against her skin. She could still feel his thoughts moving like mercury, entwining with hers.

_There is no other way through, _ she persisted. _We need to work out what to do. _

_We must go forward, _ he replied, the thought a steady intention floating above a maelstrom of doubt. _There is no other way through. _

His fingers began to slip from her face, the meld becoming more tenuous. And then they both heard it – a clatter from the corridor outside, and a quiet, odd keening that made no sense but instilled fear and sorrow simultaneously in Christine's chest.

Spock stiffened again, but he seemed calmer since the meld. Silently he took the tricorder from Christine and angled the light forwards at the broken beams and rubble before them. Near the floor was a triangular, almost impossibly small gap between three spars of wood.

Christine registered his intention without him making a sound. She nodded and sank silently to her knees, beginning to slip her body through the gap. Her pack stuck and Spock's hands reached about her waist and unclipped the belt, and she carried on pushing through, feeling ahead into the darkness with one hand. There was space enough to continue and she wriggled her hips and legs through and shuffled as far as she could away from the gap. Spock handed the tricorder and pack through and she took them, trying to light Spock's way without shining the light directly in his eyes.

He was larger than her, and had no clothing to protect his skin from the shards of broken wood. Nevertheless he forced his body through the gap and crawled towards Christine without a sound. Christine closed the screen on the tricorder just as they heard the door scrape open.

A light shone, dazzling, into the room. The strange song grew louder as the beings entered the space, curiosity overlapping fear overlapping anger. Spock sat motionless, pressed against Christine, barely breathing. There was an emptiness, and she could not work out what it was, until she realised that all this time Spock had been barely shielding his thoughts and she had constantly felt a hum of his mind in hers. Now, however, his mind was almost imperceptible as he struggled to clamp down on his over-stimulated telepathic centre.

She sat, eyes wide, watching the moving light as it pushed shadows back and forth across their tiny hiding place. The light came closer, illuminating more and more of the wreckage around them until Christine could see Spock's hunched body beside her and the spider's web tangle of broken wood around them and the strange smashed remnants of everyday life scattered across the floor. Spock was immobile, his lips pressed together in a hard line, his eyes focussed rigidly on the places where the light shone through. There was blood and dirt on his arms.

And then there was a chitter of surprise and the song grew in volume, and suddenly Christine saw eyes, glittering and horrifying, peering between two pieces of wood. An arm reached in, or something like an arm, hooking close to them but not quite reaching.

Spock exploded into action, standing in a space that was too small to stand in, pushing out at the broken beams so that they began to career out towards the huddle of aliens. The light dropped and cut off and the constant song began to fill the air with more insistence, loud and panicked and infectious. Christine pressed close to Spock, determined not to lose him as he turned and began to rip at the debris behind them, forcing a way through the room as far from the door as they could go. She flipped the tricorder open again, giving them a tiny flash of light, and then closed it again before it could give the aliens any fix on their position.

It was enough. Spock had obviously seen enough in that fleeting wash of light to fix a course in his mind and he grabbed at her arm, pulling her relentlessly through the debris as unidentified objects tumbled and smashed to the ground around them. A continuous creaking groan had set up above them. The ceiling was finally giving up its fight and collapsing entirely.

Christine stumbled, following the Vulcan blindly, realising as the ground rose in steps before her that she was climbing spiral stairs. Somehow in that momentary glimpse of the wrecked room Spock had seen stairs! Her heart hammered inside her. Surely the stairs would peter out… Surely they would…

But they did not. They led upwards with amazingly little damage, seemingly forever. And then Spock stopped abruptly and she stumbled up after him and realised they had reached a landing and the stairs went no further. Spock let go of her arm and began to feel over the wall and then he wrenched at something, grunting with effort, and with shocking abruptness the door gave way and sunlight streamed into the stairwell.

Christine stumbled out after him into enveloping heat, her eyes completely dazzled by the full light of day. The air that was stirred by light breezes tasted beautiful in her lungs after so long underground. She blinked and blinked again, trying to make sense out of the jumble of bleached shapes around her – and then Spock pulled at her arm again, making her walk, taking her away from the small turret that the stairwell had ended in.

'They may follow,' he said in a rasping voice.

It was only then that she realised just how much dust and dirt she had inhaled and that her own voice was on a par with Spock's. She reached to her side for the flask of water, and swore bitterly.

'My pack,' she said at Spock's glance. 'I left it down there.'

Spock's lips tightened, but he said nothing.

'Are you all right?' she asked him, her eyes finally adjusted enough to look at him properly. There was blood running down his body from multiple cuts and scrapes, some of them seriously deep.

He nodded, obviously making the same appraisal of her. She glanced down at herself, seeing that her tights were so full of holes they were barely worth wearing, and her uniform dress was severely torn in multiple places. Blood was seeping through the fabric on her right arm and somewhere above her hip, but she was too filled with adrenaline to feel any pain.

'I'm fine,' she said quickly.

Spock dropped to his knees almost before she heard the noise, his hands clutching at his temples. Her head jerked up and she whirled to see an assembly of a dozen of the Talasees, their song low and steady and determined, their eyes shining and fixed on Spock. As if hearing words faltering through a hubbub of interference she realised that she was understanding fragments of communication not aimed at her.

_Escaper … Truant ... The thing was needed … _

_Disgust. Return. There-below. Unsafe here-above._

Christine's eyes widened, realising that slowly the Talasees' thoughts were becoming clearer in her own mind. Spock was shaking, his forehead pressed against the rubble on the ground, his hands clenching so hard at the sides of his head that she could see blood starting up under his fingernails.

'No!' Christine snapped, unable to suppress the instinctive need to _verbalise_ her demands. 'Speak to _me_, not him!'

Spock retched abruptly, the shuddering setting up violently throughout his body. Screams began to lurch out of him as the mental words from the aliens multiplied and ricocheted through Christine's mind.

_Impossible. No mind sense. Impossible. It has no thoughts._

'I can – ' Christine began indignantly.

As their song expressed outrage and Spock's screams grew she bit her lip into her mouth and forced herself to think her rebuttal instead of voicing it.

_I _have_ thoughts. I can hear you, you can hear me. Speak to me, not to him. You're hurting him._

She almost clamped down on the moan of frustration she wanted to give, but on an instinct she allowed it, letting it be as wordless and tonal as it could be, and she sensed a slight relaxation in the creatures' glittering, iridescent bodies.

_It hears through the other,_ she heard in a tone of dismissal. _It believes it speaks alone. It does not._

_Why are you hurting him_? she pressed. _Please, can't you try – _

One of the aliens stepped forward, coming so close to her that its eyes were only inches away. Its song shivered through her skin and she suddenly felt ice cold despite the pressing heat of the sun. She could feel its breath brushing her skin, hot and staccato like the quick breaths of a small mammal and its hand moved upwards, clawed and curious, to trail across the fabric of her dress. Its song became soft with intrigue.

_It wears cloth like the other did. Wears cloth like the sick. Disgust. Wrong. We cannot communicate._

Other voices chimed in as if, perhaps, an argument were ensuing.

_The other was useful. The other healed the computers. The other has knowledge. Take them below. Need them. Use them. We are barely holding on. Make them help. Take them._

Christine became aware of them closing in, moving closer in a circle about her and the shuddering Vulcan. Her awareness seemed to be swaying, moving between the sights and the sounds around her and the conversation that was entirely within her own mind. Talking to these beings was like rendering oneself half blind and extracting meaning from their thoughts was as alien as reading Braille. No wonder Spock's mind, with its extra sensitivity to telepathy and its aversion to chaos and emotion, could not cope with the contact.

She tried to muster calm and clarity, lifting her head to stare straight into the eyes of the alien closest to her, trying to ignore Spock beside her on the ground.

_We will not help you if you continue to hurt him. Where I come from there are many others who can help. Let us go, and we will send assistance._

There was a pause and then an increase in their scattered thoughts. The song became curious again, shot through with tension and disagreement. As their thoughts turned to each other she knelt by Spock and put her hand on his shuddering back. She could feel the vibration of his screams through ribs and flesh.

She spoke as quietly as she could, not daring to project the thought of her words for fear that it would be understood.

'Spock, can you run?'

He stiffened, his hands loosening somewhat from the sides of his face and his eyes staring at her with some kind of ragged wonder. His thoughts filtered into her mind.

_They are fast. No hope. Cannot outrun them._

'Then what _can_ we do, goddammit?' she hissed.

He flinched, and then his thoughts reached her again, dull and flat.

_Nothing. Nothing at all_.


	6. Chapter 6

In touching Spock, his pain filtered through into Christine's mind. She felt sick with the intensity of it and she had to force herself to keep her hands on him, knowing that he was taking some little comfort from the contact. She looked towards the aliens again. They were standing close together still, focussing on each other, their fur shimmering so brightly in the sunlight that it was hard to look at them.

'They're distracted for the moment,' she murmured, close to Spock's ear. 'Mr Spock, you need to try to focus. You need to block them out of your mind.'

Slowly, as if it were agony to him, he shook his head, his face tight in a grimace of pain. His entire body was taut with pain, his spine a row of beads down his back and his shoulder blades catching the sun as he shuddered.

'Can't,' he whispered. The effort it took to speak was obviously tremendous, but he understood the importance of not projecting his thoughts. 'They're – beyond controls.'

He swallowed hard, and Christine knew he was trying to suppress the need to vomit.

'Can you make yourself unconscious?' she asked on a sudden whim. 'Would that cut them off from your mind?'

He lifted his head with agonising slowness, his tear-misted eyes focussing on her face with great difficulty. There was a sense of wonder in his gaze, as if there were questions in his mind that he could not manage to ask.

'You – could not – communicate,' he rasped out.

'I don't believe that,' she whispered.

If only she still had her pack, with the hypos inside, the debate would not be necessary. She swallowed, picking up a hefty chunk of concrete in her hand, wondering if she was as good as McCoy at the medical bluff.

'Make yourself unconscious, Mr Spock,' she said quietly, with deadly seriousness, 'or I will do it for you. I don't have any hypos, but I can and will hit you with exactly the right force and in the right place to leave you out cold for a good few minutes.'

For a moment Spock's eyes focussed more sharply, as if he were trying to focus on the truth behind her threat – but he could not read her while trying desperately to keep their conversation from the Talasees. Even while he was talking to her his speech was punctuated by agonised cries. It was obvious that he would not be able to stand the presence of the aliens for much longer without something breaking.

Finally he nodded, and touched a trembling hand to his own temple. A moment of concentration, and he slumped face forward onto the ground.

Christine looked up, the sudden silence wrapping around her. It was more than the silence of Spock's screams having died away, she realised slowly. There was a silence inside her head, replacing the jarring, inarticulate voices of a people so alien that they communicated in concepts rather than words, even though her own mind translated those concepts into words.

She stared at the small huddle of Talasees. They were still turned to each other, still obviously discussing what to do with this pair of strange, cloth-wearing, mentally undeveloped creatures. Their song was fluctuating, sometimes barely any louder than the wind and sometimes rising up again into something less musical and far more emotional that sent shivers through her skin.

Barely knowing what she intended to do, as if she were in a trance, she began to peel her torn and filthy clothes from her body. Any moment of self-consciousness was shed as she glanced at the aliens and saw again that they were so different from her that embarrassment was meaningless. It was as foolish as being self-conscious before an elephant or an eagle. The heat of the sun and the gentle wind stroked her skin and she realised as she stepped out of the final shreds of clothing that it was far more pleasant like this.

Still they were focussed away from her. She stood watching them, wondering what was passing between their minds, following the movement of their song but understanding no more than a suggestion of their emotion. Finally she stepped forward and began to hum the first song that came into her head. She could not use her voice for words, but she could use her emotions, something that was virtually impossible for Spock to do.

She realised that she was humming _Beyond Antares_. So many evenings on the ship she had heard Uhura singing that song, Spock playing along on his lyre. The movement of his fingers on the strings and the dark, reflective look in his eyes was something that made her heart ache, and she was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sadness for the love that she bore him that he did not return.

Slowly the aliens turned. They stared, moving close to her, their glittering eyes moving close to her face and their hands reaching out first to the shreds of clothing she had dropped on the ground and then to her naked skin. She kept humming, not letting her concentration waver. And then, threadlike, she felt a thought in her mind that was not her own.

_It feels_.

She caught onto that thought, not letting herself stop the humming, putting all the emotion she could into the tune as she looked into their eyes. She continued to think of Spock sitting in the muted light of evening in the rec room, the music shimmering from his lyre and wrapping around her. She thought of Uhura standing behind his chair and singing, and let the stinging, sad jealousy rise up in her at that friendship that extended beyond working hours into the sharing of music and song.

_It feels_, she heard again, and she focussed her eyes on the closest of the aliens and thought clearly, _Yes, I feel. And I hear you_.

A great calm was descending now that Spock was unconscious. While he was attuned to their thoughts and her sense of the aliens was bound in with his it was impossible to view them with any detachment. But now the sadness that was swelling in her and the absence of Spock's tortured thoughts was leaving behind a warm and calm plateau of emotion. She could almost have sat down in the hot sun and slept, and dreamt of Spock.

_It is sad,_ she heard in her mind.

_I am sad_, she confirmed, _because you hurt my friend. Because you held him captive for weeks and treated him so badly_.

There was a bewildered moment of interchange between the aliens that she could not keep up with. She pulled her mind away momentarily, reminding herself to keep humming, to keep rotating the tune. She moved to an old Scottish ballad and let the music drift around her.

Their thoughts focussed toward her again, and she heard, _It is useful. That one, the white one, is useful._

Her eyes turned to Spock. His skin looked startlingly white in the bright sun, in contrast to the blue dress she had previously been wearing and the aliens' bright and iridescent fur.

She frowned, concentrating, changing the tune she hummed to an angrier one, remembering a particularly vibrant song from the 2250s punk revival and letting her anger charge through it.

_That is no excuse for harming him. You tortured him. That is unacceptable. He cannot bear your method of communication but you continue to hurt him. How can you expect help in return for that?_

Quiet again as they turned their thoughts away from hers, communing amongst themselves, the pitch of their song wavering like an orchestra tuning up. There was a stillness settling through them despite the fluctuations in tone, as if an anger in them was slowly subsiding. Was it perhaps that their thoughts clashed so badly with Spock's thoughts that their interactions could not be successful? She was not sure if she would ever truly be able to understand these strange, beautiful, cruel beings.

Finally they turned back and alien thoughts entered her head again.

_How can you help?_

She sighed, trying to resist an instinctive smile, aware that such gestures might be offensive to these people. After everything, this felt like an enormous breakthrough. She began to hum, _Dance, then, wherever you may be…_ letting the joy of the tune ripple through her soul. She visualised the _Enterprise,_ somewhere up in orbit above her, and the hundreds of people on board with all of their combined knowledge. She thought of the sick bay and the healing of Dr McCoy, and of the engineering and computing departments, Scotty's miracle working and Spock's deft skill. She thought of the captain, standing with open arms and a welcoming smile, offering help and assistance and asking nothing in return.

And then she caught their response reflected back towards her – the crumbling buildings and the crumbling shelters underground that were built so long ago that they did not know if it was the radiation or age destroying them. She caught their despair at gathering enough food for those who were left, the fear of those who joined the parties who went to the _there-above_ to find food, and the fear of those who stayed below. She caught the misery of beings who used to lay themselves open to the sun at staying trapped in darkness and half-light for fear of the radiation sickness touching them too. She caught the frustration and hope mixed together when they thought of those banks of computers that held medical and scientific knowledge long lost by living minds, that because of decay and seeping damp and creatures' burrowing teeth just _would not work._

Their song was becoming a keening wail, a funeral dirge lacing above and below their thoughts. Christine found herself on her knees, the sadness pouring through her, and she knew that the aliens were taking her empathy and binding it in with their own lament.

_We can help_, she thought again, trying to make that thought clear and vital, cutting through their ballooning grief at the ruin of their world. _Not all of your land is destroyed. Not all of your people are sick. We can help you, if only I can contact my ship._

Their thoughts all riveted at once, focussing on her and asking the same question. _How?_

She looked down at the clothes that she had shed, thinking of her communicator and how it was somewhere down there in the ruins she had come from, and how Spock must also have had a communicator. She thought of how she would have to travel away from the radiation until it no longer interfered with the device, and how then she could send a signal to the ship, and speak to her people there.

_But we will speak with words, and we will wear clothing_, she warned them, conjuring an image of a recreation room in the evening, milling with people all talking in happy and unrestrained tones.

The aliens shrank away briefly.

_We cannot work without speaking with words,_ she insisted, _and almost every person on my ship will insist on wearing cloth on their bodies. We have no fur. It is a cultural difference. We will have many of those._

They moved close again, their eyes coming close to Christine's face and their hand-like things touching the skin of her arms in a new exploration of the strangeness of her body. She stood still, letting them touch her – and then she slowly raised her hand and reached out to the shining, rainbow-sheened fur of the closest being. It was soft and deep and cooler than she had expected. It was like touching fur made of chilled silk. As her fingers moved in it ripples of iridescent purple and blue moved across the surface. She felt entranced by the beauty of it.

There was a moment of palpable empathy, where the aliens touched her and she touched them, the sensation of skin as fascinating to them as the fur was to her. She looked into the glittering eyes of one and for a moment saw a soul beyond, almost unreachable by a mind such as hers, but perhaps attainable with time and effort. And then the hands dropped again and they turned away, putting their heads close again and letting their thoughts entwine.

She stood and waited in the brilliant sunshine, her eyes slipping between Spock, unconscious, and the shimmering aliens and the wreckage of their civilisation. If it were not for their treatment of the Vulcan she would feel a deeper sorrow. As a nurse, or simply as a human, her feelings were quite deep enough as it was, but the sight of Spock, pale and vulnerable, stayed the last depths of her feelings.

She waited, sensing but not quite catching the discussion between them. Their song wavered low and high. One moved over towards the stairwell that she had escaped with Spock and prised open the door, looking impassively into the darkness. Then another joined that one and then disappeared into the dark opening. Some minutes later it returned, holding her dust-stained pack in its hands. With an air of ceremony it passed it to her.

Christine remembered to hum a snatch of a joyful song, and opened the pack. Her communicator was there, safe and apparently undamaged. She opened it and static crackled. The tricorder was a little more useful, at least, showing her that the radiation weakened somewhat to the north of where she stood. She hesitated, looking at Spock, trying to work out if she could bring him to consciousness. She certainly could not carry him.

Their thoughts filtered into hers again, asking with a repeated sense of _trust, do we trust it, are they to be trusted?_ She let her mind open, thinking again of the ship and the people on board and their readiness to help when good faith was shown. And then one of the aliens picked Spock up in its spindly arms as easily as if he were a child.

Christine turned to the north and they began a slow trek through the ruins and the heat towards where the radiation was less keen. She kept the tricorder open, always monitoring as well as she could and checking that the radiation continued to wane. Spock's modifications to the tricorder were typically excellent. Where previously the tricorder had barely managed, stuttering, to even analyse the radiation, now it was giving useful, even valuable, feedback, picking up much more reliable readings of intensity and type.

Christine's eyes widened as she analysed the readings. She was no physicist, but she could see why buildings were crumbling and natural life was so stunted. No wonder these people needed help. The radiation made everything crumble at the cellular level. Short-lived plants and animals could survive, but the long-lived and the never-alive were equal prey to its ravaging effects.

Her clothes were slung over her arm. In the dry, fresh heat she had almost forgotten that she was naked, but now she ruffled through her folded dress, looking for the radiation badge that had been affixed to her chest. She had almost forgotten the device while she was underground, in the dark. It showed that she had been exposed to nearly seventy-three Cohens of radiation. Seventy-five was the utter limit that guidelines advised. Without the anti-radiation shot she knew she would have been feeling severely ill by now. It was a blessing that Spock had been underground all this time, or he would undoubtedly be dead.

The fabric of her clothes was already beginning to feel rough and friable under her fingers just from the cumulative time she had spent on the surface. Too long, and she did not trust the tricorder or communicator to hold out. But the radiation was lessening, ever so slowly. A mile, or perhaps two, and she was sure – she hoped – that the communicator would work at last.

Her thoughts turned to the others involved in the search for Spock. Had they searched and returned empty-handed, but at least returned? Were there now parties out searching for her too? She wasn't even sure how long she had spent underground.

She flipped open the communicator again, trying to open a channel without speaking and offending the aliens. Static crackled at her again, but then, broken through the interference, she heard the briefest snatch of a female voice. Nyota, she was sure. She checked the tricorder again and saw the dip in the radiation. She tried again and again, opening the communicator and tuning it carefully, until suddenly the voice came clear.

'This is the _Enterprise_. Come in, Nurse Chapel. Come in.'


	7. Chapter 7

[A.N. Sorry if it seems a bit condensed. I'm not happy with this last chapter…]

For a moment she did not reply. She had grown used to talking in whispers and undertones and inside the quiet of her own mind. To hear Uhura's voice ringing out loud and unashamed into the sun-warmed air was a strange and startling thing. And then she remembered to say, 'Chapel here.'

She glanced at the aliens, gauging their reactions to her voice. The closest of them were shying away from the offensive sound. She closed her eyes, trying to catch their minds enough to remind them, _I must speak with words, aloud._

There was nothing – no clear response from their minds. She felt a wave of guilt over what had to be done, but there seemed little other option. She moved closer to the nearest alien and fixed its eyes with hers.

_I must speak to them,_ she tried again, _so I must leave you for now. Be here this time tomorrow. I will come back._

This time she caught a response, the reiterated wondering of, _Trust? Trust it?_

_Trust me,_ she insisted. _I will come back._

'Nurse Chapel,' Uhura's voice came through the communicator, raised in concern. 'Christine? Please respond.'

She turned back to the outside world and said crisply into the communicator, '_Enterprise,_ lock onto myself and Commander Spock only and beam us up. There are other individuals with us. Please take care to isolate our signals, and have a medical team in the transporter room for Commander Spock.'

She turned her mind back to the aliens, filtering out the response through the communicator, reiterating, _Trust. We will come back. Trust us._

The world shimmered, the enveloping heat slowly dissolving away. The glittering sight of the aliens was replaced gradually with the grey walls and bright red accents of the _Enterprise_ transporter room. Members of the crew seemed momentarily frozen, but as the beam released her they jerked into life, reacting with shock and focussed speed.

It was at the moment that she remembered that she was naked.

'My god, Christine,' McCoy said, apparently unsure where to look as he snatched a blanket from a waiting gurney and handed it to her.

She wrapped it around herself as a makeshift dress, smiling with unbounded relief to be back among friends. McCoy was plying his medical tricorder up and down her body, muttering about radiation exposure and sunburn.

'I am _fine,_ Leonard,' she assured him, turning to where Spock lay in a foetal position on the transporter platform, Dr M'Benga kneeling beside him with his feinberger whirring. 'It's a self-imposed unconsciousness, Doctor,' she told him crisply. 'I can update you both en route to sick bay. He's physically relatively well, but he's suffered some mental trauma.'

'Some mental trauma?' McCoy repeated, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Christine's eyes stayed on Spock as he was lifted to the gurney and covered with a blanket. She touched her hand to McCoy's arm as he turned toward the door, unable to suppress her joy at being home and safe despite her concerns over Spock.

'I'll explain everything,' she promised. 'This is going to take some time…'

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Hours later Christine was explaining for the second time exactly what had happened, this time in the sterile surroundings of an _Enterprise_ briefing room. The distrust about the table was palpable. After her explanation of why Spock was unconscious, malnourished, and showing severely disturbed patterns of function in brain scans, Kirk seemed ready to dismiss any idea of offering aid to the aliens.

'It was unintentional,' she pressed. 'Their sociological responses are different to ours. Empathy seems to be very much based on seeing similarities between peoples. They couldn't see that with Mr Spock. It wasn't until they accessed my thoughts that they realised we were – well, human, for want of a better word.'

'Any sentient being can recognise pain,' Kirk said stubbornly, his lips thin with anger. 'They must have recognised that in Spock.'

'I think they did,' she nodded, 'but it was their only way to communicate. Their perception of their own needs outweighed their perception of his. But I promised them help, Captain. Their numbers are shrinking year on year. There must only be a few thousand of them left. They need help to move away from the irradiated areas and rebuild their civilisation.'

'Bones?' Kirk asked, looking toward the doctor.

McCoy shrugged briefly. 'It's what we're out here for, Jim. We came here in the first place to see why this civilisation had been destroyed, and now we've found out they're hanging on by a thread. By all accounts they're a long way from us on the human to alien scale, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to live. If Spock were sitting here I think he'd be saying the same thing.'

Kirk sighed, looking at the chair closest to the computer, which would usually be occupied by Spock. It was hard to shake the image of the Vulcan, malnourished and unconscious due to neglect and mistreatment by the Talasees. But Spock would be the first to speak up for the necessity of preserving life and gleaning knowledge from alien civilisations.

'Yes, he would,' he muttered. 'You're right, both of you. I'll get xeno-anthropology working on the best way to interact with them. Meanwhile,' he looked directly at McCoy, 'I want Spock awake and able to talk. I want his view on all of this.'

'Of course, Captain,' McCoy nodded.

'All right, gentlemen, dismissed,' Kirk nodded, and the small assembly got to their feet. Kirk and McCoy turned right towards sick bay as they left the room, and Chapel followed them. Spock had been left unconscious so far while his condition was analysed and his malnutrition and other problems treated, but Christine was certain that there would be little difficulty in waking him, and she intended to be one of the first faces he saw.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Spock came back to consciousness in much the same way as he had when Christine had first found him, eyes wild and mouth tight shut, staring at his surroundings. His eyes flicked from McCoy to Kirk and finally settled on Christine, relaxing as he registered his surroundings.

'They helped us,' Christine said quietly. 'They carried you to the edge of the radiation field so that we could beam up.'

Spock's eyes closed briefly. When they opened again his gaze was steady but introverted.

'I've given you a psi-suppressant,' McCoy told him. 'It might make you feel a little cloudy in the head, but it should allow your telepathic centres to begin to recover. Do you feel as if you can speak?'

He stared mutely at the doctor for a long moment. And then he said in a hoarse, quiet voice, 'Yes, I – ' He cleared his throat tentatively, looking up with a degree of nervousness in his eyes. 'Without the presence of the Talasees, it – is much easier…' His eyes moved to Christine again. 'You were able to communicate?'

She nodded, trying to keep her sense of pride from reaching her face. This wasn't the place for it.

'It was a more tenuous connection while you were unconscious, but I managed it.'

He nodded in response, his face pensive.

'Spock, Nurse Chapel tells us they need our help,' Kirk said, coming a little closer. 'Do you believe it's safe for my people down there?'

Spock hesitated, glancing down at his hands and his still-ragged fingernails. Finally he said, 'For humans, I believe it is. Their method of communication is – intensely painful to me. Miss Chapel seemed to have no such problem.'

He faltered and stopped, a look of fatigue coming onto his face.

'There are a number of social taboos that we need to be careful with,' Chapel put in, seeing that Spock had spoken enough for now. 'The problem with verbal speech, their antipathy to clothing.'

'Yes,' Kirk said pensively. 'I seriously doubt we'll find a team of people willing to go down there naked.'

'I impressed on them that they will need to compromise,' Chapel assured him. 'Perhaps a combination of tact and skimpy attire?' she suggested with a sudden smile.

'Perhaps,' Kirk said, matching her smile with a rather more tired version of his own.

'Okay,' McCoy said abruptly, looking critically at the readings above Spock's head. 'My patient needs his rest. Come on, Jim.'

Kirk gave him a brief look of annoyance but he stood without protest. Chapel stood too, but she had noticed McCoy omission of her name in the order to leave, and when Kirk and McCoy left the room she did not follow. Instead she turned back to Spock's bed and sat down beside him. He watched her mutely for a moment, and then said with effort, 'Thank you, Christine.'

'What for?' she asked.

'I would not have been found without you.'

She made a noise of dismissal. 'There were dozens of us out looking for you. I got lucky on seeing that trapdoor.'

He nodded, and subsided into silence.

'It'll get better,' she promised him. 'The difficulty in speaking. There's no permanent damage to your brain. Once your psi-centres have recovered and you've dealt with the mental trauma – '

He flinched at that, and she said, 'There _is_ mental trauma. You were effectively tortured by them for a month. You've learnt to suppress speech and to minimise all of your actions to keep yourself from being noticed by them. You have to unlearn that again.'

He nodded and she saw a haunted look in his eyes. She thought again of how she had first found him, curled up and naked in that tiny, foetid room. That treatment alone would affect most normal people, not to mention the mental pain that the aliens' communication had caused him.

'I must apologise for my behaviour,' he said. 'My control – '

'Your control was bypassed by their mode of communication,' she reminded him. 'Apology is illogical, Mr Spock. You have nothing to feel ashamed of.'

He nodded, his eyes hooded and turned away from her.

'I need to meditate,' he said finally. 'Would you leave me?'

A moment of hurt shot through her but she quickly suppressed it. Spock meant nothing personal by that blunt demand. It was just his way. She would seek him out later, and see if the meditation had benefitted him.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

She came into the sick bay much later, when the lights were dimmed to simulate night time and there were few staff on duty. Spock was in a private room to give him the peace and privacy that he needed for recovery, and she slipped into the small space quietly. He was lying on his side in the bed, his head pillowed on his hand, deep in natural sleep, but as she entered he stirred and his eyes drifted open.

'I'm sorry – I didn't mean to wake you,' she said quickly.

'You did not,' he said, and she was pleased at the lack of hesitation in his speech. The meditation seemed to have worked wonders. 'McCoy would not approve my return to quarters,' he said, beginning to sit up in bed.

She glanced at the readings above the bed and then at the chart that was stowed near his feet.

'Well, Dr McCoy is very fond of your company,' she said.

Spock raised an eyebrow. 'I see you share the good doctor's propensity for sarcasm, Miss Chapel,' he responded.

She sighed, seating herself in the chair by the head of the bed.

'_Christine_,' she said softly. 'After all this, don't you think you could call me Christine?'

He looked at her silently, a moment of frustration seeming to pass through his eyes. And then he inclined his head and said, 'Christine.' He was silent for a long time, and then he said, 'Your thoughts are well ordered.'

She looked up, startled.

'I beg your pardon?'

'During our mind contact I was struck by how well ordered your thoughts appeared. You performed admirably during our escape. I assume you are included in the landing party for second contact?'

She nodded. 'Yes, since we're the only people who've had previous contact, and since you're – well – '

'Quite incapable of communicating with the aliens,' Spock finished for her.

She could see his frustration more clearly than she thought he would want her to.

'You're doing wonderfully at recovering your ability to communicate with _us_,' she reminded him. 'And perhaps with the psi-suppressant you could beam down. You wouldn't be able to communicate with them, but you could at least study their artefacts and society – and fix their computers.'

Spock nodded slowly. 'A possibility. Still, I doubt McCoy will give me medical clearance to attend tomorrow.'

'No,' she acknowledged, 'but in the future – '

Silence fell again. She sat beside him, thoughts churning inside her that she felt unable to put into words. Down on the planet Spock had been different, closed off in some ways but more accessible in others. Here, as he recovered, he was slowly becoming the efficient, eloquent but inaccessible First Officer again. She finally caught him looking at her, an expression of curiosity on his face.

'It does not take an active telepathic centre to deduce that you wish to say something,' he said softly.

She smiled quickly, and shook her head. 'Oh, it's nothing, Mr Spock. Nothing at all.'

'I doubt that.'

She stilled herself and looked up at him cautiously. 'It's just that – well – there were moments down there, Mr Spock, moments when our thoughts were entwined. I thought I felt – '

His steady gaze was unnerving. He waited silently for her to continue. She recalled being in the semi-darkness of the bathroom they had slept in, catching that stray, mirrored feeling of his thoughts. Perhaps it had been a ghost, an echo of her own feelings, but perhaps…

'I thought I felt affection,' she said finally. 'It's foolish, I know. Vulcan men don't feel such – '

He was silent, his lips pressed together and his eyes focussed on the orange blanket. Here in the very clean and ordered surroundings of the ship they seemed a hundred years away from that time on the planet.

'I'm sorry,' she blurted suddenly, getting to her feet and preparing to leave the room. 'It's stupid. I should never have – '

'Christine,' he said, arresting her before she could leave. His eyes were fixed on her now and there was a brightness in them that was not there before. 'Vulcan men _do_ feel such things,' he admitted quietly but firmly. 'We control those feelings, but we do feel such things.' He was silent again, and then he said, 'I greatly admired your performance on the planet – but – your presence was more than that.'

She found herself sitting down again on the chair by his bed, magnetised by his dark gaze.

'If I am to conduct studies on the planet surface, I would greatly desire a research partner,' he continued in a soft voice.

She almost laughed, but restrained herself in consideration of Spock's dignity. Perhaps this was what passed for a chat-up line on Vulcan.

'Well, I'm very anxious to find out more about the Talasees and how they've survived the radiation for so long,' she nodded, keeping her expression deadly serious. 'And I know you're very good with a tricorder,' she added wickedly. 'You could take notes for me.'

Spock's eyebrow shot up. He folded his hands on the blanket, shifting in a rather nettled way on the mattress.

'Oh, well, maybe you could do a little research of your own,' she continued innocently.

His eyebrow angled still higher. 'Dr McCoy has said before that you are a woman of particular verve,' he said. 'I believe he is right.'

'Then you accept my offer of the position of research partner?' she asked him.

Spock sat propped up on his elbows, considering her for a long moment, his dark eyes seeming to reach into the depths of her soul even with his telepathy suppressed.

'I would be honoured, Miss Chapel,' he said courteously. 'I believe that research with you will be quite fascinating.'

She thought of the aliens with their glittering eyes and their shimmering iridescent fur and of the excitement of exploring a whole new culture, this time with the assurance of safety and support. It would be very different from that desperate run through the tunnels underground, but through that time a door seemed to have opened between her and Spock and she could not wait to pass through it.

The END


End file.
